


Homemakers

by nomical



Category: Bomb Girls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 11:25:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomical/pseuds/nomical
Summary: Kate smiles at Vera and Vera thinks, “she might be fun”. Kate smiles at Betty and Betty thinks, "oh no".Canon-divergent, post Vera's accident.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cân Cennau (cancennau)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cancennau/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide Madoc! I hope this little vignette gives you what you wanted <3.

 

It takes Betty all of two days to know Kate is going to be a problem. Betty isn’t one to love quickly. She’s been burned in the past and a preacher’s daughter isn’t exactly an ideal match. But Kate looks so lost in the sea of white jumpsuits that Betty can’t help herself. The first-time she hears Kate sing, a genuine smile spreads across her face – something that hasn’t happened at work in months. Kate’s voice sounds like silver bells and rings out with a surprising amount of force for someone who shrivels as soon as she’s the center of attention.

Betty goes dancing with Kate more times in a month than she has in her entire life. Kate is light on her feet and surprisingly graceful for someone who stands with a perpetual slouch. It takes her an extra beat to get the joke, but when she does her laugh lights up the room. She flinches if someone taps her on the shoulder but she clings to Kate like moss on a tree. Betty knows Kate isn’t doing it on purpose, but it’s getting harder and harder to let go.

Even though she and Vera have talked it over, Betty still feels guilty, like she’s having an affair by even looking at Kate. She brings it up again when she visits Vera in the hospital after her accident.

“You do whatever you want, honey.” Vera smiles blithely but she still refuses to turn her head and look at Betty directly. “It’s not like we’re exclusive.”

“No,” Betty’s shoulders tighten. “We’re not.”

“You have your fun, I’ll have mine, and sometimes we have fun together. That’s all people like us can do in the world. Next time you come, would you bring me a pack? I’m gasping.”

Somehow, their talk doesn’t improve Betty’s mood. But when she’s out of the hospital and lying in her bedroom, Kate tucked snugly against her side, humming along to a Billie Holiday song, it’s a lot easier give in to the little spark of hope she’s been carrying around in her chest since Kate’s first day on the factory floor.

***

Vera misses the first weeks of Kate's growth from runaway victim to one of the girls, but she takes to her like a moth drawn to a flame. Just because she's out of the gloom of the hospital doesn't mean all the dark thoughts have gone away. Vera loves easy and fleeting; she loves the fall but she doesn’t make a habit of sticking around. Sure, she and Betty have been having their fun on and off for a year or two, but it’s not like they can actually do anything about it. So they meet in alleyways and storerooms, any place with a dark corner and walls to lean on, and when they’ve got their fix they part as friends. There’s nothing more because there can’t be anything more – something Vera has to remind herself of more often these days.

But Kate adds something special to the mix. Until Betty came along, Vera hadn’t even looked at other girls that way. Maybe it’s because Kate’s the only one that doesn’t act like she’s talking to a convalescent when they chat. Or the way that she doesn’t give two hoots about Vera’s face.

“I have scars too, you know,” she says, stopping Vera in her tracks.

It’s after a long, frustrating day of flirting her way out of too many close encounters with Mr. Akins. The girls have been dancing around her like she’s made of glass and all she wants is to go soak in a tub, but something about the sincerity in Kate’s wide eyes makes her hold back the vitriol she’s about to spit.

“Can I show you?” Kate asks.

Vera nods and watches as Kate lets her dress slip off her dainty shoulders. Her back is a mess; skin puckered and pebbled in jagged lines across her back.

“How-”

“My father.”

It’s the start of a dialogue that defines them both, and the sight of Kate’s gorgeous curls spilling onto her bare back stays with Vera for a long, long time.

***

Kate’s the one who takes the longest to come to terms with it all, but then again, slow and steady always was her style. It feels so wrong to push Betty away after the kiss, but she can’t shake the image of her father brandishing the iron at her. The heat pooling in her stomach is surely from the white-hot metal, not because she’s enjoying the kiss. There’s some heartbreak on all sides after that, but they sort themselves out alright in the end.

Her life at Vic Mu is so much more than she dared dream. The shackles she wore as Marion Rowley break apart a little more each day, until she can’t remember the sound of her father’s voice. She’s the one who plucks up her courage and kisses Betty after a night at the dancehall. Then it’s her turn to face rejection as Betty pushes her away for fear of someone seeing.

Harder still is navigating a twosome into a threesome. Somewhere along the way, Betty and Vera became a package deal but Kate can’t find it in herself to mind. In for a penny, in for a pound and all that. There’s something wholesome about waking up between them and placing butterfly kisses on Vera’s temple while Betty trails a hand down Kate’s side. It’s something more akin to love than she ever found at home, so how can God hate her for it? It’s in the quiet moments, with the three of them tucked carefully in their bed under their own, hard-earned roof, that Kate reflects on what Betty said to her all those years ago when she was filming the newsreel.

“Don’t you ever want something of your own?”

She thought they’d been talking about a house; some cookie-cutter box with the same white-picket fence running down the whole block, and Kate couldn’t understand why Betty wanted one of her own so badly. But now, with her heart filled to the brim and her girls on either side of her, she gets it. Slow and steady.


End file.
